Simon Trevor follows an elephant from almost the moment of its birth through the seasons as it grows and learns, and its herd experiences good times and draught. It ends with Ahmed of Marsabit, the fabulous tusker who was the only Kenyan elephant ever to be protected by Presidential Decree. Lovingly and exquisitely photographed.
Category: Documentary
Shot over a period of two years, and with unprecedented access to the Aum sect accused of mass killing with Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, this astonishing documentary by Tatsuya Mori offers a complex view of subjects as diverse as personal responsibility, public responses to terrorism, surveillance, and individual rights.
A trip along the seamy edges of New York City and a voyage through the consciousness of the mad beat poet Alan Granville. “Broken Meat” captures Alan’s New York, stripped of its glittering surface: a strange, deserted place.
A documentary on youth gang violence in Los Angeles and the special police detail which is designated to fight it.
Acclaimed British filmmaker Peter Watkins collaborates with twenty-four students from the Swedish Folk High School in Biskops-Arno to craft this highly unconventional look at the life of controversial 19th Century dramatist August Stindberg. An iconoclast who flouted the conventions of then-contemporary society to promote political and social change, Stindberg and his freethinking followers were considered outcasts whose revolutionary ideas posed a great danger to the standards of society. By purposefully structuring his film in a carefully layered, spiral manner, director Watkins aims to reflect the filmmaker’s admitted concern over the influence of mass media while simultaneously suggesting ways in which that same media might share its unique power with the people in the not-so-distant future.
Pollet provides an insight into life on the leper colony of Spinalonga, an island off Crete, through the eyes of Raimondakis, who tells the story of his life to the camera after having been excluded from his community to spend years of his life on the island with his fellow sufferers. Themes addressed include love, community, companionship and death and the importance of these values to all people whatever their state of health.
Afro Promo is a feature-length compilation of one-of-a-kind, archival coming attractions trailers from black films of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s. This historical overview scans the social issue films, plantation dramas, and African safari movies of the 1950s and ’60s, blaxploitation, music and sports biographies, and other genre examples of the ’70s, as it tracks the burgeoning careers of such popular stars as Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Bill Cosby, and Dianna Ross. Entertaining and educational, Afro Promo provides a compact glimpse at the representation of African Americans through thirty dynamic years of American cinema history.